Picasso Museum – Eugenio Arias Collection

The Picasso Museum, the Eugenio Arias Collection, in Buitrago del Lozoya is one of the smallest and most unusual museums devoted to Pablo Picasso, and its subject is a friendship rather than a career. It is named after Eugenio Arias, a barber from Buitrago who became one of the painter’s closest friends. Arias was born in the town in 1909, and after the Spanish Civil War, he left Spain and went into exile in France, where he worked as a hairdresser. In the late 1940s, he met Picasso, who was living on the French Riviera, and cut his hair for about a quarter of a century. Their friendship lasted until the painter’s death in 1973, and Arias became part of Picasso’s circle, accompanying him to bullfights and exhibitions and sharing his love of Spain from a distance.

The collection consists of gifts that Picasso gave to Arias over the years, in affection, and a few that he received in other ways. They were small tokens at first, such as drawings, dedicated posters and ceramics, which Picasso signed and sometimes decorated with a quick sketch, and over time they formed a personal archive. Arias, who remained loyal to the Republic, kept them in exile, and later gave the whole group to the Provincial Council of Madrid, to be shown in his native town. The museum opened in the 1980s in a building in the centre of Buitrago, and it holds around seventy works.

What you see is unlike a major retrospective. There are drawings with themes that run through Picasso’s life, such as bullfighting and the Mediterranean, prints and graphic works, ceramics, posters from exhibitions and bullfights, and books with dedications. Many of the objects were made as casual gifts, and they reveal the humorous, warm and generous side of the artist that is less evident in his great canvases. A box of hairdressing tools decorated by pyrography is the best-known item, and it symbolises the relationship: it is said that Picasso helped Arias with money and gifts, while Arias gave his services free. Photographs show the two together, and the display gives a sense of the long exile of many Spaniards in France.

Buitrago itself is a pleasant medieval town on the Lozoya river, about eighty kilometres north of Madrid, in the mountains of the Sierra de Guadarrama. A near-complete circuit of walls, built in the Middle Ages, encloses the old centre, and the walls and a fifteenth-century castle with Mudéjar decoration are among the most interesting monuments. The Church of Santa María del Castillo, also in Mudéjar style, stands within the walls, and the river curves round the foot of the old town.

The museum is small, and a visit takes about half an hour, so it combines well with a walk around the walls. Check opening times, since they are limited and vary by season. Buitrago is a good half-day trip from Madrid.